After a close call with franchise death (diagnosis: anemia), the X-Men film series has bounced back to life with its fifth installment, rescued with a straight injection of pop. Directed by Matthew Vaughn, “X-Men: First Class” reaches back to the early 1960s for an origin story of mutants, mad men and mods that takes some of its cues from James Bond and more than a few costumes from Austin Powers. Like “Mad Men,” this new “X-Men” indulges in period nostalgia as it gazes into the future, using the backdrop of the cold war (and its turtlenecks) to explore how the past informs the present (while also blowing stuff up).

Like the first “X-Men,” this one opens in the 1940s in a Nazi concentration camp, where a young Erik Lehnsherr tries to destroy a metal gate that’s separated him from his parents with what appears to be the power of his mind and his anguish. It’s a futile endeavor, but one that attracts the attention of a tea-sipping sadist first called Dr. Schmidt and later Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon, enjoying himself), whose venality earns Erik’s wrath. His anger and Shaw’s evil drive a story that leaps from World War II to the cold war when, as the United States and the Soviet Union play a rigged game of chicken, the adult Erik (Michael Fassbender) will brood across a chessboard at a future nemesis, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy).

“First Class” relates how these dreamboats became the antagonists who were played by Ian McKellen (a k a Magneto) and Patrick Stewart (Professor X) in the first films and, with the rest of the characters, were eventually swamped by ever noisier special effects. Written by Mr. Vaughn with a clutch of others, the new movie is lighter in tone and look than its predecessors, and appreciably less self-serious than those directed by Bryan Singer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it also feels less personal, though Mr. Vaughn gets satisfying performances and copious tears, along with sex appeal, from his leading men. Mr. Vaughn doesn’t bring conviction to the story’s identity politics (say it loud, I’m mutant and I’m proud), but he gives Mr. Fassbender and Mr. McAvoy room to bring the brotherly love.

Photo

Michael Fassbender in "X-Men: First Class."Credit
Murray Close/20th Century Fox

After parallel introductions of the young Erik and the young Charles (in Westchester County, where Charles is joined by Raven/Mystique, played as a teenager by Jennifer Lawrence), the scene shifts to 1962. A few cranks of the plot later, and assorted fiery and smoking-hot mutants with handles like Angel (Zoe Kravitz) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) are soon walking on and flying over a world stage alongside Soviet generals, American men in black and Shaw, now fortified with superpowers and a cool number, Emma Frost (January Jones, sullen, bosomy). Mr. Vaughn, whose last movie was the modestly scaled “Kick-Ass,” keeps the mutants, locales and narrative elements from blurring together and sometimes gives the proceedings a nice jolt, as in a forcible tooth extraction seen from inside a gaping mouth.

The defining virtue of the first X-Men movies was the seriousness that Mr. Singer brought to this saga of mutants uneasily sharing fates and plotlines with humans. His signature unsmiling approach at times tipped into overkill, like cement shoes on a drowning bunny. Yet his moody lighting and characters also worked as a countervailing force to the camp that has often clung to comic-book movies ever since George Clooney ran amok in a Bat codpiece. Movies like the original “X-Men” turned the ethos that shaped what’s been called the Dark Age of comic books into blockbuster gold (“Spider-Man” and the rebooted “Batman” shortly followed) and fed harder-edged small flicks like “Kick-Ass” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” which push and pull between comic-book super-parody and super-solemnity.

“X-Men: First Class” is plenty serious, mostly in its ambitions for world box office domination. With its spy-on-spy globetrotting, old-fashioned villains (we’re back in the U.S.S.R. for a few scenes), flirty but prematurely swinging minis and fan-boy bits (look for an eye-blink-fast tribute to “Basic Instinct” and a cameo from the cult actor Michael Ironside), the whole enterprise has an agreeable lightness, no small thing, given its rapidly moving parts. The weighty themes — post-Holocaust defiance and post-Stonewall pride — are still in play but less laboriously. “Never again,” vows Erik, raising the freak flag. It’s a gesture that the “X-Men” faithful, already schooled in the rights of man and mutant, can dutifully nod at while they and everyone else groove to the sounds of “Green Onions” and the sight of the former Mrs. Don Draper on ice.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn; written by Mr. Vaughn, Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz and Jane Goldman, based on a story by Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer and the Marvel Comics series by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; director of photography, John Mathieson; edited by Lee Smith and Eddie Hamilton; music by Henry Jackman; production design by Chris Seagers; costumes by Sammy Sheldon; produced by Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Gregory Goodman and Mr. Singer; released by 20th Century Fox. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes.